[danShumway]

ARIA properties are really just the escape hatch. For the most part, people shouldn't be using them except to fill in gaps.

Semantic HTML is the simple alternative. And the reason HTML has worked for accessibility overall is because it forces developers to use the accessible interface.

Compare that with image/video captions/descriptions, where most devs just don't do it. If you have a programming setup where the accessible and visual parts of your interface are two separate things, then by and large you will usually only get software with a visual interface.

The terminal is another good example of this. It turns out that forcing developers to code an interface that can reduce to pure text has some advantages for accessibility, extensibility, and portability.